DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Comrade Harris Pt 2

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...rols-on-food-under-guise-of-gouging-ban/

Cackela announces soviet-style prices controls under the guise of a price gouging ban.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/media...pasteboard_app&utm_source=reddit.com

Shady Harris has doctored headlines on google search

And the adults in the room were doing so well until you returned. You must have forgotten about Nixon's price freeze. Breitbart, really?

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/202...zes-kamala-harris-for-dodging-questions/

Stephen A Smith bashing Harris for dodging questions.

You must have went back to kindergarten. Why are you even here? Did the teacher give you a pee pee pass?

Brietbart,,, Yeah, their take is without a doubt worth NOTHING

More important than that, is it that your for Price Gouging?

Over and Over again there is one example after another how corporations have been Raising prices and shrinking the size of what your are buying. (potato chips come to mind as one example)

And you are all for that?

Oil and Gas companies making record Profits while continuing to raise prices at the pump? But your good with that?

Sounds like you haven't given that much thought.

If Kamala becomes president, I hope she installs price gouging penalties. There are designed to help us. But it's ODD you don't see that.

Of course you are for communist controls.

Lol. She's got a point, as I mentioned just a few hours ago in a different thread.

My guess though, it's just some tough talk so she can be painted as a badass and would never come to pass. Corps have ways of making you pay in other ways, and when you screw with the food corps, they have plenty of ways to throw wrenches in your gears.

Eve- a quote about your "news" site= Breitbart.com) is an American far-right[5] syndicated news, opinion, and commentary[6][7] website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Its content has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by academics and journalists.[8] The site has published a number of conspiracy theories[9][10] and intentionally misleading stories.[11][12] Posts originating from the Breitbart News Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.[13][14][15][16]

If you read it on breitbart it is the absolute truth-----NOT

Well said and man, I see that happen constantly as well with corps.

It’s kinda funny how we were talking in the other thread. I happened to mention the “OG liberal approach” being price caps and controls. I had absolutely zero clue this would happen right after that.

The issue now is that she is coming up with a solution, whether it’s a good one and whether she follows through with it, like you said, is a whole different issue. I remember a while back, I was having a great discussion with DCDAWGFAN in this forum on government policy. He brought up a point that stuck with me. Basically pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. It’s all well and good to make money, but when the gouging happens, you’re practically begging for the Government to step in, like with the monopolies of the Gilded Age. I certainly never want to see that happen, but it’s almost inevitable in certain eras it seems.

The problem for me is the opposing side has the opportunity to come up with a counter solution to the same issue. What I imagine they will go with is the “fear” approach that Memphis posted in that tweet on the other thread. They will bash Harris’ policy and talk about how bad it is, and they may very well be right.

What I think they are short on right now though is proactive, counter-solutions which I have not seen. I would welcome things such as enforcements against collision, anti-trust and other proactive means of increasing capitalist means of competition, but so far I haven’t seen anything like that being thrown out there. Basically, instead of constantly telling me how bad something is, tell me what you want to do to fix it.

Who cares if it's far right, you guys post stuff from far left media all the time. Even main stream media is pretty far left. Pretty sure your "media and academics" are far left. So suck it up buttercup.

That's the freaken dumbest thing you have ever said to me.

Trump calls Harris a communist and all you right wing nut jobs decide to take up the slur and post it everywhere.

Can't be dumber than that

You must love it when you get Gouged by the VERY companies and People that trump wants to give tax breaks to... Genius.

Pretty sure the dumbest thing in the boards recently is people refusing to admit things are what they are.

"Communist" is not a slur. It's an ideology that has practices that she has proposed implementing in various settings.

You complain about price gouging. Meanwhile you want the government to continue subsidizing their overpriced, far left indoctrination centers (colleges/universities) under the guise of "student loan forgiveness."

We can't address a problem by bringing up another problem.

It was tangential, but I do think the Government needs to heavily scale back student loans. When we talk about price gouging, yes, I do think college education is among the worst forms of gouging we see.

That has been going on for some time now, though, spanning the last 3-4 administrations. Many of the various forms of student loan forgiveness being employed (like PSLF/IBR/PAYE) are not new. It's just that now, more than ever, students are finally reaching their forgiveness milestones. I think its dumb that we keep trying to bail water out of a boat that's leaking vs plugging the leak. But nobody seems to want to address the issue of issuing loans in the first place.

That all being said, the question at hand is price gouging that typically spans the consumer price index. We have seen ample evidence that is occurring. Harris has proposed price controls. I am typically not a fan of that solution, but let me ask, then, what is YOUR solution? What should be done about a problem?

Also, Daman, Peen said "communist controls" and, unless I missed it, didn't outright call Harris a communist. I think he beats the communist word to death in a lot of areas where it's off-base, but in this case, it is a lever that resembles a socialist (read different than communist) tactic that would coincide with a pretty wide left economic ideal. I don't think in this scenario it's worth getting in a huff about.

[1] Well if posters only want to troll they sure can and they sure do. Constantly.

[2] Good luck with that - said poster only likes to criticize certain posters (constantly) without ever actually proposing solutions. Belittling and nit picking - no solutions.

As for the use of the word communism ... I'll stick to what I have said dozens of times: Europe is MILES AND MILES to the left of where the US Democratic party sit. France, Germany, the UK, Holland, Belgium ..... none of them are remotely close to Communism. Posters referring and calling the Democrats 'communism' simply demonstrate how they have bought into an echo chamber and regurgitate trash "talking points".

]

Did you forget or was it Comrade Nixon?

As far as price gouging with food prices in mind, I think we need to promote more local agriculture and "cottage garden"/personal food production. Breaking up the Monsantos, and other corporate monstrosities in the food sphere, would be nice, but I don't see it happening. If more people knew how to grow their own food, not only would they be less subject to the whims of profiteering corporations, but if done properly there would likely be environmental and personal health benefits.

Sadly, a populace capable of providing for its own needs is harder to take advantage of, so I doubt politicians would ever consider letting go of their golden geese.

Yeah, I've echoed those same points on communism. I think the only two places off the top of my head where you can find something that might resemble actual communism (Bolshevik style) are Cuba and DPRK.

It's hare to have a discussion with someone who acts like they're 10 years old. I would like to apologize to all 10 year olds in advance.

I'd be all for trust-busting. I think that would be at the root cause of a lot of our pricing issues, from consumer, to producer, to defense, healthcare, etc. I think that is one of those things we need to start demanding, as citizens.

I'd be interested to see how we would promote more local agriculture. I think given where a lot of people live, basic skill issues, and a bunch of other things, it might be difficult to promulgate personal farming, but perhaps somehow promoting local area farming might be useful. I have no expertise on that so I wouldn't mind pulling the thread more.

However, that is still one area out of many that are affecting consumers. When it comes to manufacturing, that is not something we could revert to doing at our homes and communities. I think we really need to focus on trust-busting and increasing competition, driving start-ups and releasing strangeholds generally. I am all for that. I do think it is a more long term approach though and there is a problem with the here and now.

You should check out the allotment system they use in the UK. Urban farming is also a thing in some places here in the US.

I agree that many people lack the basic skills of growing their own food, I think that's something that should be corrected. I also think the "where a lot of people live" could be drastically improved with more growing/"green" spaces.

It's (agriculture/food) one area, but it's one area that affects every other area and every individual. Everybody has to eat. People take lousy jobs for lousy pay because they have to eat and don't know how/aren't able to provide for themselves otherwise.

I'm pro local artisans over mass produced, mass marketed manufactured unnecessary "necessities." It's not all bad, I just find the attitude of rampant consumption/production through artificial "inflation"/marketing inherently problematic.

I think we need increased cooperation much more than we need increased competition. Sadly, we have "competitive" ("greedy") corporations and individuals that want to keep as much as possible to themselves.

I'm not sure how we get to a place of cooperative "competition" rather than the "combative" (/"screw everyone else") competition we have now.

I'm not completely anti-manufacturing, but I do think more of the capital investments/equipment should be employee owned with wealth distributing more equitably to blue collar workers rather than concentrating almost exclusively in board rooms.

I think our economy has become too focused on accumulating/producing "stuff" (physical objects) over things that actually matter (health, happiness, etc.)



(...sorry, jabbing at a phone screen isn't the most conducive to well framed discussion....)

I don’t know anybody that has less than 200k in student loans- undergraduate and graduate combined. Heck, looking at schools for my daughter and you can’t find a private college for less than 45k a year for an incoming freshman. I like the income based repayment options- allows kids and adults to pursue skills and not worry too much about the cost. - If we didn’t have this option, we’d have few, very few people who could afford post-secondary education, fewer colleges, fewer opportunities, and a less educated country.

As for my daughter, she wants Cornell or Notre Dame. - Sounds great but…. I told her to consider Kent, Akron, Cleveland State - All great schools, and the wife and I could probably pay her tuition in full. - Fingers crossed.

How did that work out? I have no solutions for what is happening but that doesn’t mean I can’t see that price controls are a bad idea.

Wow! All these people........did they just borrow everything?

Son has a masters. All said and done, all his loans for Bach and masters, was right around $70,000. (BS at a private school, and Masters from a MAC school)

Daughter, BS in nursing - total loan amount for her was $31,000.

I really love where this thread has gone. This is what I really want to see happen in our politics. RM, bull, thank you, genuinely, for the discussion. I love this stuff. Truly. Don’t need to agree but man, do we ever need to talk.

On the topic of competition, cooperative vs combative, I think capitalism at its best promotes a healthy competition. The best product or service promotes itself through both price and quality. I see “cooperation” and “competition” as being the same. If you have enough players competing against each other, the emphasis goes to the product or service rather than trying to buy the politician…hopefully at least. Right now it’s obvious that we’re stuck with very few players who rose to the top that are rigging the system in their favor. That desperately needs to end. In true capitalism you have to promote hard work, but you also have to allow for failure. We’ve greatly struggled in the latter as of late. The bigs don't even have to try anymore.

RM - I myself fell victim to the college tuition and I was forgiven via PSLF. I like those options too, but to be honest, IMHO they shouldn’t even be needed. If prices weren’t so artificially inflated via the current lending procedures, the price of tuition would crash and invaluable degrees would cease to exist. That would involve bursting a recession sized bubble, but I think it’s necessary in order to heal and get back on the right track.

I think I've posted this here before, if not it's something I have mentioned a lot recently to friends and family.... I'll be honest and say I don't particularly care for price fixing or regulation . If there is a mechanism to prevent price gouging that doesn't interfere with a compaines right to make profit while preventing abuse I'd be interested but who decides where that line is?

However my personal bug bear with food companies is my belief that ultra processed foods is the next "cigarettes" scenario where decades from now it will be apparent that the food companies all know that ultra processed foods literally take years off our lives, create all sorts of other medical issues..... And they are hiding and deflecting from this. The evidence is somewhat overwhelming but it's also hard to quantify and qualify.

Not sure if people are aware... 10 companies control virtually all the worlds mass produced foods... And i really don't think the people in charge give a rats patootie about our health.

https://invisiblyallergic.com/2022/02/05/biggest-food-companies-that-control-the-worlds-food/

While I'm at it... And tangential to food price capping... Novi Nordisk is a Danish company that makes most of the words insulin. Three times more than the next company... Does anyone want to defend why insulin in the USA costs 970% of other developed countries in the world?

Man, I've missed about five launching points because I'm busy, but this has been great conversation.

Couple things to add quickly (and I'm sorry, this prolly won't be eloquent). Community/ localized/ personal farming and gardening is happening. It's just a slow process to change the paradigm. Again though, we're fat, lazy Americans... if prices come down a bit (and they always know when and how to set the hook), Joe will trade in the garden weasel for the remote by next year. We need to be committed to marching towards critical mass. This is one area where you let your dollars do the talking -- be committed!

"I think capitalism at its best promotes a healthy competition." Boom. That's exactly the way it has throughout our history. Then I go back to our initial "food" conversation -- they've taken painstaking measures to create the illusion of competition.

I had high hopes after the reality of COVID destroyed inventory infrastructure that the result would be competition. It hasn't happened yet in a manner that has greatly affected the consumer's bottom line. This too may be a slow process.

Bottom line, I think, is there will be no immediate relief. Many markets have been reset. But that does open the door to competition. If I were running for president and wanted to send a real message, mine wouldn't be that different than Kamala's. Do I think it's much more than a campaign strategy? Not really. But I don't think you can fault me by being jaded by a lifetime of b.s coming out of everybody's mouths.

If we had leaders that simply committed to either breaking up monopolies or putting measures in place that capped profit percentage (gouging reg's, if you will) we would be in much better shape. But make no mistake, there are monopolies, or the same effect as them, everywhere we look, and our leaders act like they can't see them because they pay for their campaigns.

Hope I made a lick of sense.

Gotta roll. Good stuff guys.

It didn't work out well. But the actions Nixon took were far more reaching than what is being proposed now. At least from what I've gathered thus far. Up until now all we have is what people think it is she'll exactly propose. And the purpose is to stop price gouging. In the case of Nixon he froze all prices and wages. A very dramatic and extreme action.

I'm not sure how it will all play out and it will be interesting to see the entire plan be announced. I was more trying to point out that all these whackamole claims about socialism and communism are simply BS. As I have shown Nixon took even more drastic steps to try and repair the economy and Republicans weren't making such claims about him when he took those steps.

People need to come to the realization that there is no perfect system. Capitalism is a fine system as long as there are checks and balances to make sure it isn't abused. The government is supposed to help and protect its people. Neither side actually does a very good job of that. Having a strong business community and growth is a good thing. Sitting back and watching major corporations run rough shod over the people and not taking any steps to correct it is not what's good for anyone.

There has to be a balance achieved in the middle. Yet every time someone comes along to help try to strike that balance people act like they're trying to install a communist or socialistic government. Depending of course on who it is doing it. When it was Nixon the right wasn't claiming it was communist or socialist. They only claim that if a democrat is doing the same thing he did to an even lesser degree.

It all boils down to this. It's not about what's being done. It's only about who is doing it.

College tuition inflation? You don't say.

Colleges/Uni's are in business. The business of attracting customers. The business of education is second - you have to have customers.

How do you do that? You put water parks on your campus. You offer "degrees" in what ever. It's easy. The more customers, the more money you have to buy more customers.

Oh, and make it easy to borrow way beyond anyones means to repay the loans. Banks, etc, love that. Get the bait on, get a bite, and you're drawing in fish constantly.

Easy money.

Drug prices here vs the rest of the world is a HUUUUUUGE problem. I don't know why it doesn't get way more coverage than it should.

One thing I'll add is the Eisenhower tax brackets too. If those same type of tax brackets were reintroduced nowadays, we'd have a "Camrade Eisenhower" thread.

That was among the best cliff notes posts I've seen on here. Bravo.

I'd also add to that. The universities present zero value added degrees to their customers as a means of just obtaining those loan funds directly into their coffers. You want to spend $200K to be an art history major? Great, just give us the money.

I actually think it would be helpful if 1) the faucet of student loans was significantly slowed down and/or tied to a metric for salary expectations depending on what degree is obtained utilizing metrics that are openly availabe, spanning the last couple decades and 2) allowing loans to be discharged through bankruptcy.

The latter may seem crazy, but honestly, banks are all that more willing to hand out student loans knowing that they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. If the banks faced a real threat of the loans not being repaid, that would create an organic environment where the banks would exercise far more discretion before just forking over loans and higher-than-inflation rates anyhow.

And yet they keep telling us it's the other side who has changed so much while they're the same. It's so blatantly easy to see that's simply not true. But parties have veered off in their own different directions. Reagan granted amnesty to almost 3 million immigrants. Can you imagine what would happen and the hell that would be raised if a democratic president did that now?

I think that's an unfair comparison. Reagan attempted to wash 30+ years of bad policy and made that available to people who arrived up to 1982 when that was passed in '86. Besides that, there were requirements, and those with criminal histories were all-but-gone. Then they had to basically jump through the same hoops of those that came here legally. Literacy tests, language tests, history tests, etc...

The Immigration Reform and Control Act also introduced the I-9 and added a layer of accountability for employers to prove citizenship. Now -- I'm not saying that all worked, but no one knew it wouldn't until it didn't.

You're also talking about a time when we would actually raid Latino neighborhoods and depoort people just because we wanted to.

Different era, really different situation. Especially for those that advocate wiping the slate clean for the 10M+ that just crossed in the last four years.

Just my .02

Agreed. And with my name on the loans, I made sure my kids were going into fields that could repay the loans after they graduated.

Son has done that in spades. Daughter is doing it in spades. "I'm not putting my name on loans for basket weaving" so to speak.

I will bend over backwards for my kids, and will cover their ass in the worst case scenario. Neither of them presented me with that. Oh, I owe that much? I got it. Thanks dad, no worries.

I wish more wouldn't chase the "I can be, if only I can borrow this much, which I can't repay"..............move.

2 nephews, a friend.....graduated high school and went in to the trades. All 3 making more than me, at ages 19 and 22. Good for them!

My daughter just graduated a couple years ago with a 4 year degree in computer science-take away the honors scholarships-she ended up with about 32k in student debt. Between her bank account and 529-she could pay in full but didn't. We talked and she put some money in an index fund.

My son is going into his junior year in honors electrical engineering with a second major in mathematics. As of right now he has about 12k in student debt-but he has (4) scholarships for this year which basically pays in full the tuition and he lives at home-so his junior year is free other than some fees and his coffee-and he has a 529 and has worked internships both summers so far-We are leaving some room available in his expenses because he wants to go get his masters degree.


We are no where near 200k in debt for either of our kids-it can be done. But they did the hard work to get the scholarships and internships.

Amazing. And neither of your kids are getting "degrees" in nothingness? That blows my mind.

Who is "those"?

I understand that there are those on the far left that may espouse such things. But that's nothing close to what any official policy from the Biden administration has proposed. I think if you actually look at it you may see how close it is to what Reagan proposed only with a much smaller number of immigrants that may qualify..............


So I agree that we can find people on the fringe of both sides that have extremist views about this which does not benefit anyone when we try to present that as the popular idea or the actual plan a party is proposing. But often times when we look beyond the noise and get down to what's actually on the table we find it's not as far out and crazy as the fringe is.

The only problem is that the "entire plan" is never really announced. If there was transparency and accountability instead of BS and sound bytes and excuses, maybe people would have some semblance of trust towards politicians. Unfortunately, all we have is dissembling and bills that the politicians don't even bother to read and understand all of.

People claim that price controls are akin to socialism and/or communism because decades of economic theory and writing have declared it so. Ludwig von Mises (Austrian-American economist) wrote multiple books on the subject in the '40s. (link)

For you, perhaps, it only matters who is doing it. For me, it is only what they're both doing. I don't much care how you label them. There are the pretend they love you "politicians" and "down to business" "politicians," but both ultimately just want your money. They'll lie, cheat, steal, etc to get you to give it to them. You might not like the label of communist, but the action is what it is, and it isn't free market capitalism.

I'm pretty sure Milton Friedman (a Republican) was pretty clear in his disagreement with Nixon's price controls despite your narrative to the contrary.

I'm not saying price controls are definitively a bad thing, but as an economic policy they are more connected with socialism and communism than capitalism. Trying to deny that is a loser of an argument.

Embrace a changing world and more socialist economic policy. You talk about achieving a balance in the middle, but it's hard to do that when denying the side of the balance you want to move towards. Preach the balance, rather than clinging to something you can see the benefit of moving away from. I'm not saying throw out capitalism, but it could use an injection of humanity (/"community"/"social justice.")

Will "the plan" work? I don't know. I don't see how denying what it is and trying to rewrite history are helpful.